Published August 2009 (HC) August 2010 (PB)

RIGHTS INFO.

It's Beginning to Hurt, James Lasdun

Library Journal Best Books of 2009

The Atlantic Top Five Books of 2009

LA Times Book of the Year Selection

Best American Short Stories 2010

O. Henry Prize 2010

In sharply evoked settings that range from the wilds of Northern Greece to the beaches of Cape Cod, these intensely dramatic tales chart the metamorphoses of their characters as they fall prey to the gamut of human passions. As James Wood, the celebrated critic, has noted, “James Lasdun seems to me to be one of the secret gardens of English writing…when we read him we know what language is for.”

“Every story is heart-poundingly vivid. Mr. Lasdun’s characters live in the here and now...He instinctively understands human psychology, and it seems as though he can turn anything into a story.” – Wall Street Journal

“James Lasdun has an uncanny ability to conjure up ordinary lives with extraordinary perception…With prose that is stunningly clear, direct, and incisive, he gives us a series of startling, provocative snapshots that resonate well beyond the page.” – Boston Globe

“If you listen, you can almost hear it ticking: the time bomb of anxiety, or delayed gratification, or fear, or deflected love, in any one of the artfully told stories in James Lasdun’s latest collection, It’s Beginning to Hurt . . . Intimate, sometimes wryly comforting tales of tenderness and rue.” – O: The Oprah Magazine

“Like such maters of dark literature as Edgar Allan Poe and Franz Kafka, Lasdun lines the deep cracks in the soul even as his takes are enlivened by his gift for insight and ear for language. His stories are a fury of elements: skilled dramatic monologues; sketches of fraught emotional states.” – Miami Herald